Facing Down Imposter Syndrome

First off, imposter syndrome is a liar. It’s your fear whispering insecurities in your ear to keep you ‘safe’. Safely wrapped in the devil you know to keep you from the devil you don’t. In keeping you from the devil you don’t know though, it keeps you from growth and new experiences, and that’s not something we tolerate. Lately, imposter syndrome has been rearing its ugly head when I’ve been working on my novel. It’s telling me that my writing is crap, the storyline is boring, it’s repetitive and no one is going to want to read it. Imposter syndrome is feeding my ego that doesn’t want to see me fail, and I can’t fail if I don’t try. Giving up would be a failure. Quitting would be a failure. Even if everything I’m doing now is crap, practice makes progress, and we’ll never grow and develop if we listen to imposter syndrome. It reminds me of the idea that sparked my interest in The Way Of The Fearless Writer by Beth Kempton. The idea is to ‘write in the service of writing’. In other words, I took it to mean, write what your heart tells you to write. Write to get better at writing. Write because you love it. And that could go for anything else we do in life. If our aim is to improve and to do the things we do for the love of doing them, the ego has no place in that. It can’t whisper in our ears that we suck or that people are going to judge us, because our aim is to learn and not to be perfect at it on the first go. Everything in life is a journey, and it’s okay to have slow spots. It’s okay to work for improvement and to be honest about where we’re at. Thanks for reading this week’s ‘Lessons From The Page’. If you enjoyed it, please leave a like or a comment. Have you had any success in facing down imposter syndrome? I’d love to hear your stories. Have a great weekend. I’ll see you back here on Monday for some poetry.